Reform UK’s candidate vetting under fire after secret ITV footage

Reform UK faces fresh scrutiny over its candidate vetting after an ITV News undercover film showed a local chairman urging a reporter to delete social media posts supporting Tommy Robinson and then inviting him to apply for a council seat. The year‑long footage also captured a former candidate, Alex Lomas, saying he failed the party’s vetting twice, yet received an email claiming he had passed and a phone call asking him to stand in Oldham, where he later lost. Reform MP Robert Jenrick told BBC’s Today programme that every party has \"bad apples\", said he disliked what he saw in the documentary and claimed the party acted quickly to remove or suspend those featured. The party’s statement acknowledged that a handful of individuals who do not share its values may slip through vetting, calling it a problem common to all organisations, and affirmed there is no place for racism. Reform accused ITV of \"extreme methods of deception\" for using false information to gain an undercover role. Party leader Nigel Farage, who pledged stricter vetting two years ago, reiterated that Reform vets to a higher standard than other parties but cannot predict future comments. Local branch chairman Ian Frost described the meeting with the undercover reporter as the first stage of vetting, advised deleting Robinson‑related posts, and suggested the reporter could become a councillor and perhaps an MP.

Context

Party vetting scandals often resurface when hidden recordings expose lapses, highlighting the difficulty of fully policing members’ past statements on social media.